The evolution of local governance needs agile new thinking

Attempting to understand local governance in SA today, both the forces that have shaped its development and its current state, calls to mind the words of Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto that “the past is many nations’ present”.

While the shortcomings and glaring service delivery failures can in part be explained by mismanagement and poor governance, local government continues to be haunted by the spectre of apartheid spatial planning, supported by legislation that segregated the provision of basic services along racial lines.

Going even further back, SA’s economic history is key to understanding the evolution of urban design, town planning and local governance. Many of the country’s major cities were all first established as outposts of economic activity: Cape Town as a refreshment station of the Dutch East India Company in 1652; Johannesburg as a settlement for gold rush hopefuls in 1886 and Kimberley out of the discovery of diamonds in 1871.

Just as colonialism and later the discovery of mineral deposits spurred the growth of human settlement in our country, major political and economic events, and even health threats, have shaped town planning globally. This is evident when one looks at how the world’s older cities were designed and developed over time.

For example, the Industrial Revolution in Britain in the 18th century drew millions of people into cities that were largely under-serviced. This influx led to demands for housing, sanitation and other services, putting pressure on authorities to reimage local governance and town planning.

The 1854 outbreak of cholera in London and the discovery that it was transmitted via germ-infected water inspired modern-day forms of sanitation. The city’s response was to overhaul the city’s sewerage system into paved walkways, covering pipelines that could take waste water safely downstream and away from drinking supplies.

Similarly, the devolution of health-care services and what we today term universal health care in countries like Britain largely evolved out of the need to standardise access to services in the wake of World War 2.

South African cities followed an “anti-city” form of development led by the wealthy classes and private developers, all of whom were white.

Whether initially established as colonial towns, industrial nodes or mining towns, as they grew their populations demanded planned infrastructure and services to be provided. This called for better and structured urban planning, and through this the modern local governance system evolved.

A salient feature of these cities, as we now know too well, is that they were apartheid cities, even before apartheid became a policy. Whites were at the front of the queue for housing, sanitation, health care, education and social services, and blacks relegated to the margins. Only whites were allowed to enjoy the urban life. Legislation was used to define who the “population” was and who was not considered to be the “population” to be served by the city. 

THE NATIVES LAND ACT

The Natives Land Act of 1913 and subsequent legislation clearly defined that black South Africans had no right to own land, even as shareholders outside of the native reserves. The Native (Urban Areas) Act of 1923 defined African South Africans as “temporary sojourners” outside of the native reserves and subsequently a wide variety of laws were passed defining clearly the rights of black South Africans of the apartheid state.

The passing of the Group Areas Act No 14 of 1950 and Reservation of Separate Amenities Act 49 of 1953 continued to restrict the freedom of black people even though by then many black South Africans had lived and worked in the urban areas for generations and many of these families had no links at all to the “native areas”. 

Indeed, the introduction of “bantu beer” was not only to keep black South Africans servile but the profits made on it paid for the construction of apartheid infrastructure such as single-sex hostels. 

These draconian laws did not stop the migration of African people into urban areas, although it was controlled. It became evident that as more people migrated to the city this would lead to the deterioration of living and health conditions, resulting in more demands for social amenities and general infrastructure provision.

While apartheid and colonial laws loomed large, urban residents — especially the white Randlords — were still class-conscious and driven by dominance over the conquered group. This was expressed through symbols of power, control, wealth and authority. 

At the same time, those who were subjugated fought for their right to decent human settlements through rent boycotts, transport boycotts, mass action and challenging the apartheid state.

Post-1994, when all the apartheid policies that had shaped their spatial morphology faced amendment or repeal, South African cities needed major structural and governance changes

Big business, realising its profits were being challenged through sanctions and protests, formed the Urban Foundation as a lobbying think-tank, and some of the legislation started being relaxed, such as the Group Areas Act.

Other legislation had also been modified that had tried to divide African South Africans on the basis of African “urban insiders” versus “rural outsiders” — and along ethnic lines.

But even with these relaxations, basic conditions allowing for access to water, sanitation, housing, health and energy for the majority of African South Africans did not change.

The capitalist classes knew that to ensure there was rapid development and industrialisation, the working classes required a healthier, hygienic, structured and rules-based urban living of all residents. This could be summed up as an emergence of the “urban safety valve”. 

This became one of the principal reasons outside SA for the provision of public goods, basic services and management as enhancers of land values. Easy access to public amenities, transportation and housing became an integral component not only of inner cities or regional planning concepts, but also to community and neighbourhood scale design.

Post-1994, when all the apartheid policies that had shaped their spatial morphology faced amendment or repeal, South African cities needed major structural and governance changes. It is a matter of public record that the effects of those policies and laws were to remain for decades, with a terrible legacy of inequitable and inefficient human settlements patterns.

It was to local government that the solution to these problems was proposed.

Chapter 7 of our constitution clearly spells out the raison d'être of local government as, namely, to ensure the provision of services to communities in a sustainable manner; to promote social and economic development; to promote a safe and healthy environment; and above all to provide democratic government to local communities.

As a separate sphere of government, municipalities can make decisions and laws for their jurisdictions and they may carry out the executive and legislative functions of local governance. These principles were carried through into the White Paper on Local Government, the Municipal Structures Act, the Municipal Systems Act as well as the Municipal Finance Management Act.

In summary, this basically means that the way cities and towns were to be governed had to be in line with the constitutional provisions and legislative frameworks applicable to this sphere.

NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT

Fast-forward to about the year 2000, as these newly established and amalgamated local governance structures were evolving, we started to witness the emergence of neoliberal urban governance policies predicated on privatisation and framed about new public management (NPM). 

The emergence of NPM can be summarised about the after public sector reforms: professional and flexible top management, separation of policy formulation from operations, public sector departments carved up into business units (entities with boards), wide-scale outsourcing and tendering of services, among others.

While there is a deeper nuance and variations across the country, in addition to political fractures, these factors are written all over the story of the genealogy of the crises of local governance we are witnessing today.

For example, while eThekwini privatised the most effective municipal bus system, which has all but collapsed, Johannesburg was hollowed out as critical co-functions were corporatised. There is a strong argument that the introduction of NPM weakened the capacity of the state. Private sector interests influenced many council decisions as authorities needed to retain positive investor confidence (for metros) and as the “right” companies needed to be awarded tenders.

This approach has reconfigured the relationship between the state and citizens

Along the same lines, the local government sphere has to predicate its social and economic policies on the principles of market fundamentalism, where access to basic services is based on one’s ability to pay. What we are witnessing now is how this approach has reconfigured the relationship between the state and citizens as tensions arise in places where communities fight against the commodification of basic services like water.

Having traced this evolution, the critical question is how to address the trust deficit that has grown between local government and communities.

First, for the state to be truly developmental it needs to have tighter state-society relations. Cognisant of the fact that it has to work collaboratively with non-state actors, municipal councils need to be sufficiently strong to manage local economic development, participatory planning, environmental health, human settlements, budgets and land use, among others.

Second, local government officials need to be reminded of what the sphere exists for, how it has evolved and why the public is so outraged about service-delivery failures. At the core of local government is solving local societal challenges, providing water and sanitation and housing and managing the designs of towns and land use. A municipality that to fails to provide these basics has no reason to exist.  

Third, it may be necessary to revisit the local government funding model. Now it depends on own-raised revenues (through municipal rates, water and electricity payments and the like). Local government receives little revenue from the national fiscus by way of grants or equitable share, despite the responsibility of local government to provide services to the poor and indigent, who cannot pay for them.

As part of this we also need to look at the sometimes pernicious effects of NPM with regard to the outsourcing of service provision. If citizens have become clients, users and customers, what is the purpose of municipalities?

Fourth, building capacity at local government level is critical. Developmental local government is dependent on efficiently run municipalities with both capability and capacity. Corruption needs to be acted against and accountability and consequence management needs to be enforced.

Ultimately, what is needed is a sober analysis of whether prevailing conditions enable or undermine the building of developmental local government. If it is the latter, then one need not be held back by outmoded models of local government development that fail to take into account critical factors such as rapid urbanisation, environmental degradation and even the evolving needs of the population for services like connectivity that did not exist 27 years ago when democracy came.

Just as the cholera outbreak, the Industrial Revolution, the bubonic plague or the discovery of mineral deposits in SA forced the hand of history and propelled the development of responsive local governance, we must be similarly agile. Only this time through a developmental prism that advances inclusivity and equity. Unless we do so, local government will continue to be hamstrung by the sharp blade of our apartheid past.

• Ngcaweni is principal of the National School of Government